'Lights Out: Nat “King” Cole' Off-Broadway review — Dulé Hill and Daniel J. Watts blaze as two iconic singers
Read our review of Lights Out: Nat “King” Cole off Broadway, a new musical at New York Theatre Workshop starring Hill as the title singer and Watts as Sammy Davis Jr.
The variety show has almost all but disappeared from the American consciousness, save for intermittent, short-lived revivals (like Martin Short and Maya Rudolph's six-episode Maya and Marty from 2016) or when pop stars like Sabrina Carpenter or Kacey Musgraves do one-off Christmas specials. There was a time when the variety show was, with cornucopias of music, sketch comedy, interview, and monologuing, where people either launched their careers or expanded them. Everyone from Ed Sullivan to Sonny and Cher had one, and for one all-too-short, but nevertheless sparkling, moment in the middle of the 20th century, Nat “King” Cole, with his unmistakable sultry and seductive voice, had one, too.
The show only lasted 64 episodes, just a little over a year, and Colman Domingo and Patricia McGregor’s Lights Out: Nat “King” Cole imagines what happened on the night of the show’s final taping in somewhat wobbly, though appealing, fashion.
Lights Out leverages the show’s overtly stagey format to intermittently enchanting and frustrating effect. Stars like Eartha Kitt (Krystal Joy Brown) and Betty Hutton (Ruby Lewis) make amusing appearances while Nat himself (Dulé Hill) manages his feelings just as the plug is about to be pulled on the show due to Wall Street’s refusal to supply national sponsors. He’s visited by ghosts of the past (his mother, played by Kenita Miller) and future (his daughter, Natalie, also played by Brown), while the show’s producer (Christopher Ryan Grant) all but twirls a Faustian mustache as he pushes Cole to placate white audience members.
There are surreal flourishes in the show — backstage ghosts, commercial jingles with references to microaggressions, Sammy Davis Jr. as Santa doing an Oprah impression — but they’re crammed into a book that, despite lofty ambitions to interrogate television as a hub of racial and capitalistic discourse, sometimes feels too much like a basic bio-musical. In an attempt to get the singer’s greatest hits into the show, “Orange Colored Sky” strangely gets mapped onto a traumatic memory of racist violence against a young Nat, and the producer gets to sing “Mona Lisa.”
Its more gonzo takes on Black stardom are primarily driven by Sammy Davis Jr. (Daniel J. Watts), who plays the impish bad boy to Cole’s more serene, debonair persona. Watts is nearly a show-stealer (Hill is also quite good as Cole), setting fire to New York Theatre Workshop’s modest stage. Curiously, Davis is the figure to prod Cole into political consciousness, which, while dramatically useful, may not necessarily be historically accurate. (Davis’s politics were complicated.) Nonetheless, with chemistry as foils and peers, Hill and Watts keep the show on its toes (even literally, with a barn-burning number in the middle).
Lights Out: Nat “King” Cole seems to yearn for more space to figure out what it wants to do and how. It wavers between the pleasure of its entertaining, simple variety numbers and its energetically strange and fever dream-like approach, yet it mostly occupies some middle ground of not being strange enough. But Hill and Watts, conjuring the coolness and the fire of Nat and Sammy, are enough to keep the show’s lights on.
Lights Out: Nat “King” Cole summary
In the 1950s, Nat “King” Cole was one of the most successful pop singers of the time, with ubiquitous songs like “Unforgettable,” “Stardust,” and “Smile.” But his fame in the realm of variety show television was short-lived. At the final taping of The Nat “King” Cole Show, its titular host tries to go out in style, with guests in tow, while trying to make sense of why America wasn’t ready for it.
What to expect at Lights Out: Nat “King” Cole
Clint Ramos’s design for the show is scaled back, with little more than the boxy music stands typical of the variety/late night/big band genre and a clump of TV screens hanging above the stage. Every so often, a couch for Eartha Kitt or a desk and typewriter for Nat will be rolled out. For a variety show, there’s maybe not enough of the world Nat is trying to conjure for his audience.
But Stacey Deroisier’s lighting is clever, useful within the world of the show and for the audience. It illuminates the actors’ showmanship in a retro way while also cleverly indicting the crowd. Red and green lights indicating “audience approval” sit on either side of the stage; safe and palatable content cues the green lights, while risqué, racially charged, and politically potent material sets off the red.
What audiences are saying about Lights Out: Nat “King” Cole
As of writing, Lights Out: Nat “King” Cole has a 68% audience approval rating on the review aggregator Show-Score, compiled from 18 reviews from theatregoers.
- “Important musical history however this musical missed the mark. Great voices, lighting & set. The script & direction needs work.” - Show-Score user Doug Rob NYC
- “The whole thing is much more surreal than I would have expected, but the performers give it their all. Hill is particularly good. The story doesn't always make sense and goes off the rails from time to time, but overall fairly enjoyable.” - Show-Score user chris_
- “A messy (described as 'fever dream') productin [sic] is weighed down by its book and preachy/obvious text.” - Show-Score user wildcat
Read more audience reviews of Lights Out: Nat “King” Cole on Show-Score.
Who should see Lights Out: Nat “King” Cole
- Fans of Nat King Cole will be impressed by Hill’s astute embodiment, uncannily approximating not only the crooner’s voice, but also Cole’s cool persona.
- Theatregoers should absolutely see the show for Daniel J. Watts’s incredible and lighting-strike-exciting portrayal of Sammy Davis Jr.
- Fans of mid-20th-century pop, including artists like Eartha Kitt and Peggy Lee and songs like “Me and My Shadow” and “Nature Boy” will find excellent renditions of that music.
Learn more about Lights Out: Nat “King” Cole off Broadway
There’s more than a glimmer of a great show in Lights Out: Nat “King” Cole, anchored by an excellent Dulé Hill and a showstopping Daniel J. Watts. But too often it’s pulled between bio-musical cliches and a weirder, more confrontational study of Black stardom at the birth of television and Black artistry dancing on the knife’s edge of commerce. Upon cancellation of his show, Cole supposedly quipped, “Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark.” The line gets repeated throughout Lights Out, but the show itself seems to be a little afraid, too.
Photo credit: Lights Out: Nat “King” Cole off Broadway. (Photos by Marc J. Franklin)
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